A Bit Of Circus, A Touch Of Theater

Circus Flora Visits Du Page

July 21, 1988|By Jack Hayes.

If you`ve been to a modern, three-ring circus lately, you know how flashy and almost frantic that product has become. Multitudes of spotlights swirl about, horses circle in one ring, lions roar in another, acrobats fly across a third while hundred of children in the audience flash souvenir light guns.

The circus has gone Las Vegas, says Ivor David Balding, producer of Circus Flora, which appears Tuesday through July 31 at the Oak Brook Terrace Towers. In the process, it has lost much of its charm, he says.

``I despise the three-ring circus,`` says the 49-year-old Balding. ``It lacks focus, and it lacks intimacy with the audience.``

Balding describes his circus as a ``one-ring, romantic, traditional circus.`` It is patterned after circuses that toured this country in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Seats in the single tent that encloses the circus run right up against the ring, and no one is more than 40 feet from the action, says Balding. That way, he says, ``you can smell the sawdust in the ring, feel the dust as the horses gallop by, and touch the elephant, though I don`t particularly approve of that.``

Balding is especially protective of the circus` only elephant. Named Flora, for an elephant in Jean de Brunhoff`s Babar books, she was adopted by Balding in 1984 after being orphaned in Africa, and she has gone on to become the circus` mascot and namesake. Along with many of the circus`s 20 human performers, Flora appears in Pee-Wee Herman`s new movie ``Big Top Pee-Wee,``

which opens on Friday.

Circus Flora staff taught the usually jittery Pee-Wee to walk a tightrope for the film. ``He`s surprisingly well-balanced,`` Balding says of moviedom`s perpetual kid. ``He`s also a very serious person with great respect for the circus.``q

Teaching Pee-Wee came naturally to members of the circus, some of whom teach at the Circus Arts Foundation School in St. Louis. Founded in 1985 by Balding and three others, the foundation is the parent organization of Circus Flora and the school, both of which are non-profit enterprises dedicated to preserving circus culture and arts.

Pee-Wee`s principal circus mentor was internationally renowned circus performer Alexandre Sacha Pavlata. Head of the circus school and technical director of Circus Flora, Pavlata also performs in the circus on the death-defying ``Cloud Swing,`` a bare rope suspended from the peak of the 40-foot-high red-and-white tent.

Prominent among the other performers in the circus is Tino Wallenda, grandson of high-wire artist Karl Wallenda, who died in a fall in 1978. The 37-year-old Tino Wallenda, a member of the sixth generation of Wallendas to perform in the circus, does a tight-wire act with his three daughters, age 3, 10 and 14.

The Rosinback Riders, led by circus veteran James Zoppe, do an acrobatic act on trotting horses that includes Zoppe doing a somersault from one horse to another. Jessica Hentoff (daughter of writer Nat Hentoff) and her partner Kathie Hoyer perform a sort of mid-air ballet from a single trapeze; and Los Alarcon, a team of Brazilian clowns, add musical instruments to the usual routine of pratfalls and broadsides.

Circus Flora is distinctive in that it is held together by a loose storyline. Titled ``The Journey West,`` the two-hour performance traces the journey of a fictional Italian circus from St. Louis west across America. The Fox family, a group of Native American dancers, and Geronimo, one of two performing buffaloes in the world, represent the New World in the circus while Flora and her human colleagues represent the Old World.

The blend of circus and theater seems natural to Balding, who has long dabbled in both. The son of a British horse trainer who settled in Long Island, Balding literally ran off to join the circus in France while a freshman studying theater at Harvard University.

After returning to this country in the 1960s, he worked for the New York Shakespeare Festival, founded the New Theatre in New York City, and in 1980 became consulting producer for the Big Apple Circus in New York City.

``Once you get sawdust in your shoes, you just can`t get rid of it,`` he says of his return to circus work.

As to his reason for founding Circus Flora, he says: ``Four years ago, while working with commercial circuses, I became dissatisfied with them as an art form. The talent was still there, but it just wasn`t being presented well.`` With Circus Flora, he says, he set about ``restoring the circus to its rightful place alongside ballet, theatre and opera.``

Balding`s dedication to presenting the circus in its purest, most traditional and intimate form appeals to performers as well as audiences.

Tino Wallenda says he finds performing in a single ring exhilarating.

``It`s the idea of the closeness, being in a circus where you can see eye to eye with the audience, where they can see the sweat on your brow and you can see the expressions on their faces.``